Your Bikini Season Grocery Shopping List

When we ruminate on women who are total warriors—entrepreneurs, role models, and go-getters, with badass bodies to boot—two women immediately come to mind: Karena Dawn and Katrina Hodgson (who are known better as the entity “Karena and Katrina”). The best friends and business partners are the fitness trainers behind lifestyle brand Tone It Up (TIU), and through their work, they have helped millions of women to lose weight, gain strength, and reach their inner and outer potential. Their healthy approach to food, fitness, and living the life of your dreams is nothing short of admirable, and you’re going to love getting to know them. We’re excited to share that the trainers are our newest Byrdie contributors (just in time for summer and swimsuits!), and today they’re sharing their first of many helpful columns to come: your bikini season grocery list. Keep scrolling to see what they had to say!

Hi, Byrdie babes! We’re so excited to start sharing some of our lifestyle tips with you. What are your weight-loss, training, and nutrition goals these days? What are you hoping to accomplish for summer? Maybe you want to drop a stubborn five pounds, tone your tummy, eat a healthier breakfast, or get stronger arms. Maybe it’s holding a plank for 60 seconds or doing five push-ups in a row. Whatever your goals, we can help you get there. Today we’re talking about a grocery list that’s great for an overall bikini body. These are the healthy, fresh foods you want to stock up on every time you go shopping—that you can make tons of healthy meals and fueling snacks from. Keep reading for the rundown!

Our overall grocery philosophy is nothing processed. When you’re trying to build a bikini body, you want to reach for good, whole foods. We have a fun little rule we follow when you go to the grocery store, to just shop the outside aisles—going for the fresh produce, then going to lean protein, and then making the way back to where the beans and nuts are and not really going through the processed aisles. That’s the key—skip all the center aisles.

For protein, buy whatever your preference is, whether lean fish, chicken, or, if you’re vegetarian, something like tempeh. Instead of dairy yogurt, reach for a coconut yogurt or an almond yogurt. Dairy can cause belly bloat—which you want to avoid during bikini season! Also on that note, the asparagus is de-bloating (as we wrote about in more depth here)—and foods with high water content, like watermelon, are great slimming snacks. Lemons so you can have lemon water (with cayenne pepper) in the morning and throughout the day. We love brussels sprouts—we buy them at the grocery store 100% of the time. Karena always picks up different types of beans—you can make a bean salad for lunch or dinner. Get a couple of different types of vinegar—apple cider vinegar, and balsamic vinegar for dressings to mix with lemon.

We love kombucha and tea to sip on throughout the day, and almonds and walnuts for snacks. Pretty much all of the times on the list (from beans to nut butter and celery, apples, cucumber, grapefruit, bananas, raspberries, and blueberries) can be had as healthy, whole food snacks, or combined as ingredients in larger meals. Dinner and lunch options can be your lean protein of choice, baked or grilled; served with steamed kale, carrots, asparagus, brussels sprouts, or bean salad; and seasoned with lemon, sea salt, and vinegar. Snacks can be things like a banana and almond yogurt sprinkled with coconut shavings and raspberries, an apple with almond butter, or a handful of walnuts with coconut yogurt and blueberries. Breakfast can be egg whites with spinach cooked in coconut oil spray, yogurt and fruit, or our favorite is we make power protein smoothies with kale, banana, fresh or frozen pineapple, coconut water, ice, and our Perfect Fit Protein. You can check out our 8-Week Bikini Program here, which includes specific recipes and meal plans involving all of these ingredients.